Nigerian women forced into voodoo prostitution

Greek police crush voodoo prostitution ring

Greek police said Thursday, November 12th, that they had smashed a gang that forced Nigerian women into prostitution using voodoo in the latest of a number of such cases reported in Europe.

The Athens Police Department said the traffickers are believed to have exploited more than 40 Nigerian women brought to Greece via Turkey in the last two years.

A 20-year-old Greek woman of Nigerian origin was arrested on suspicion of working for the network and police are seeking her husband, who is also a naturalized Greek citizen. Police rescued five women held captive by the traffickers against a ransom of 80,000 euros (R885 369) demanded from their families.

In October, Dutch prosecutors sought prison sentences of up to eight years on Tuesday for ten Nigerians accused of using voodoo curses to force about 140 Nigerian girls into prostitution in Europe. The trial, on charges of human trafficking and membership of a criminal organisation, opened in March in Zwolle in the central Netherlands and judgment will be handed down on December 3.

Prosecutors claimed that the girls brought by the gang into the Netherlands as asylum seekers had disappeared from asylum centres in 2006 and 2007. About a dozen of the girls were traced, while the rest were thought to have been forced into prostitution in Italy, Spain and France.Their ages ranged from 16 to 23.

The suspects were arrested in the Netherlands in October 2007 after an investigation by Dutch police in collaboration with their Nigerian, Italian, Spanish, French, Belgian, British, Irish and US counterparts.In August Spanish police said they had smashed a gang that used the threat of voodoo curses to force Nigerian women to work as prostitutes in Germany, arresting more than 50 people. - AFP

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Black magic cultists are using Voodoo to control the minds of Nigerian girls and force them into prostitution. This has been a common phenomenon in the European region involving the human trafficking victims from West Africa.

Voodoo is deeply rooted in the Western African culture. Voodoo priests often use a ritual to "seal financial transactions or root out suspected thieves -- often with a threat of a deadly curse for the wrongdoer." [1]

Likewise, traffickers lure young girls into the false promise of job in Europe and make them go through voodoo ritual. The girls are told that if they leave the traffickers or the pimps, it "will bring death to them or their family." [2]

An incident like this reinforces the importance of raising the awareness and educating the potential victims to bring about cultural changes to prevent further harms in the future.

Human trafficking arrest in Nigeria

From The Punch:

Eighteen foreigners and a Malian suspected to be the kingpin of human trafficking in Nigeria, were on Friday, handed over to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and Other Related Offences by the Lagos State Command of the Nigerian Immigration Service.

The alleged kingpin, Mr. Mahmud Culibaley, was arrested after a tip-off by the NIS at a border town in Lagos, while trying to arrange for the distribution of the 18 foreigners to different parts of the country.

The 18 illegal immigrants were from Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry and Mali.

Culibaley was alleged to have facilitated the entry of hundreds of illegal immigrants into the country in the last few months.

According to the Comptroller, Lagos Command of the NIS, Mr. Ayo Oredipe, the upsurge in illegal immigrants is becoming a major threat to national security as the motives or intention of the immigrants cannot be immediately ascertained.

Worried by this development, the Comptroller-General of NIS, Mr. Chukwurah Udeh, had recently summoned the top hierarchy of the Immigration to discuss and find a solution on issues of human trafficking.

He said, “We have a serious issue that had been of concern to government. We discovered that so many able-bodied men are being brought into the country. We are not certain about where they are going, but we want to put a stop to it.

“It is true that there is poverty, but it has not got to the stage of bondage. What is going on is a threat to national security; this is a situation where the productive manpower from other countries is entering Nigeria illegally.

He added, “We were given a mandate to fish out Culibaley and here he is with 18 other foreigners waiting to be distributed to different parts of the country. We are going to hand him over to NAPTIP and we suggest that he should be prosecuted.

“He said he had been in this business in the last six months, but today, his business empire had collapsed.”

The Public Relations Officer, NIS, Lagos command, Mr. Sunday Abutu, said that investigation carried out could not link their movement with terrorism, stressing that it was more of human trafficking.

In an interaction with our correspondent, Culibaley, who said he was the leader of Malians in Nigeria, disclosed that the foreigners usually gathered at a point from where they were brought into Lagos by motor cycle operators.

While admitting that the illegal immigrants were brought in for labour, Culibaley, however, said that he knew that what he was doing was illegal.

Police Action: Prostitute Numbers Reduced in Norway

From the Aftenposten:

There's been a marked decline in the number of prostitutes on the streets of Oslo this week. The decline follows two waves of arrests aimed at cracking down on human trafficking.

Police in Oslo arrested nearly 70 persons earlier this week, all of them tied to the Nigerian circles of prostitutes who have been aggressively going after customers on downtown streets during the past year.

Of the 66 persons rounded up, 18 have been charged with offenses including human trafficking, pimping and dealing in stolen property. Prostitution itself is not illegal in Norway, but pimping is. Anyone considered to have organized prostitutes' activities is subject to prosecution, and a new law also opens for prosecution of persons buying sexual services.
All the persons arrested were women, except one. Most were held pending examination of their identity papers and proof of resident status.

It's believed that most of the active foreign prostitutes in Oslo have obtained resident status in another European country, thus giving them permission to live and work in Norway. Even athough Norway is not a member of the European Union, it is part of economic trade and cooperation agreements that allow EU residents to freely move across borders.

The 18 charged with serious offenses are aged 25 to 40 years. Those charged with human trafficking are suspected of transporting large sums of money out of Norway, believed to be individual prostitutes' revenues.

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Nigerian police crack illicit baby trafficking ring

From Reuters:

By Ijeoma Ezekwere

Enugu, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian police said on Thursday they had broken a major baby trafficking ring, arresting a doctor believed to have brought infants from pregnant women and sold them at a profit for more than 20 years.

Police in the southeastern city of Enugu arrested Kenneth Akunne along with 20 pregnant women aged 18-20 during a raid last week on his Uzuoma Clinic.

"The doctor, is notorious and has been in the trade of selling babies for over 20 years now," Desmond Agwu, Enugu state commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, told Reuters.

The arrests were made after officers stopped a taxi during a routine search and found a woman with a day-old baby she said she had bought for 340,000 naira (1,483 pounds) from Akunne's clinic.

Uzuoma Clinic is one of the scores of illegal "baby farms" in southeastern Nigeria, where infants are sold to people desperate for children and ready to pay to avoid the red-tape of the country's adoption laws.

Despite being the world's eighth-biggest exporter of crude, most people in Nigeria live on less than $2 a day. Apart from the illicit trade in babies, Nigeria also faces the problem of domestic and international trafficking in women and children.

Many in Africa's most populous country see childlessness as a curse, boosting demand for the illicit baby trade.

Nigeria's anti-human trafficking agency NAPTIP said Akunne paid the women 35,000-50,000 naira (151-216 pounds) to give up their babies. Boys are more expensive than girls.

"When we spoke to the doctor, he claimed that he was only helping the ladies, taking care of them and relieving them of their unwanted babies," Ijeoma Okoronkwo, NAPTIP's Enugu director, told Reuters.

"They are all very young girls wanting to hide away from the shame of adolescent pregnancy and the doctor provided a safe haven for them," she said, adding Akunne was a qualified medic.

Some of the women, who said they went to the clinic because they did not want to keep their babies, accused Akunne of physical abuse.

Authorities in Nigeria suspect some people buy babies to use their body parts in rituals by witch doctors who they believe can make them instant millionaires. Others have been trafficked to Europe -- especially the United Kingdom -- where they are used in welfare fraud schemes, rights groups say.

Nigerian trafficker arrested

From allAfrica.com:

Nigeria: Human Trafficking - 80yr Old Woman, 13 Ladies Arrested

The police have arrested an 80 year old woman and 13 young girls over their alleged involvement in human and child trafficking in Abia State.

The arrest of the suspects is coming barely one week after the police apprehended some youths said to be students of higher education institutions of learning over their roles in the kidnap of persons for ransom.

Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro who briefed newsmen on the arrest of the suspected human traffickers, said the octogenarian...was arrested in her private hostel where she harbours young preganant ladies, particularly teenagers who fled from home and school to escape the scorn and stigma of unwanted pregnancy...

Investigations revealed that the teenage mothers were usually kept within the walls of the hostel throughout the period of their pregnancy until they delivered their babies. However, all the suspects have denied the allegations.

According to Okiro, babies delivered in the hostel under the supervision of Mrs. Erondu were usually sold out to some unnamed clients of the hostel who are said to be either childless couples in search of children to adopt or influential persons in society who procure the babies for rituals believed to give them political victory and wealth.

The Police boss expressed appreciation to the informants who exposed the illegal trade perpertrated...adding that such cooperation was a clear confirmation that a strong police-public partnership was necessary in the task of safeguarding the security of lives and property in Nigeria.

This, to me, was a strange article and a strange case that confused me as to who the police felt were victims and who were the criminals. Obviously, the children who had no voice in the matter and were sold to families or wealthy couples are victims.  The rest is unclear. Nonetheless, it adds another layer to the complexity of this already complex crime.

Nigeria: Porous Border Aids Human Trafficking

From allAfrica:

Nigeria's porous border with its northern neighbour Niger is being exploited by traffickers smuggling teenage girls to Europe where they will work as prostitutes, immigration officials told IRIN."Our 910 kilometre boundary with Niger is too much for us to police which provides human traffickers an advantage to conduct their trade of smuggling young girls to Europe for prostitution," Oemi Bio Ockiya, head of the Nigerian immigration department in Kano told IRIN.

Ockiya said girls are transported from the southern part of Nigeria to Kano from where they are driven to Libya through Niger and then shipped to Europe, their final destination, for prostitution.

The traffickers convince the girls and their parents that lucrative jobs await their victims, but force them into prostitution once in Europe by holding on to their passports.The trafficking of young women to Europe through Kano has been a common occurrence.

Hitherto the traffickers would smuggle their victims through Kano airport using fake and stolen passports.

However the introduction of state-of-the-art passport reading machines and a run of high-profile arrests meant the traffickers resorted to driving the victims overland to Niger then Libya from where they are shipped to Europe, Ockiya said.

Ahmed Bello, head of the federally-funded National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons [NAPTIP] in charge of 18 northern states said trafficking is also spreading HIV/AIDS."Our investigation shows that 40 percent of trafficked girls repatriated to Nigeria test positive to HIV and this has serious social and economic implications," he said.

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Nigeria Needs Funding for Anti-Trafficking Efforts

Written by Chinyere Amalu

From the Vangaurd:

Executive Secretary of National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other Related Matters (NAPTIP), Mrs. Carol Ndaguba, says it requires about N3 billion to function effectively.

Announcing this in Abuja yesterday at the 12th National Stakeholders Consultative Forum on trafficking in persons, Mrs. Ndaguba called for inter-agency collaboration and renewed proactive intervention in the fight against human trafficking in the country.

Her words: “Due to the type of work we do in this agency, a lot of money is required, and this cannot be anything less than N2-3 billion. We need more than this but can start from somewhere. Also, you cannot rehabilitate victims of trafficking with an empty hand. So, we need a lot of assistance both financially to carry out this work.

“It takes a lot to handle the issue of human trafficking. We run a shelter home for them in all the states. In a month, we feed about 600 people currently in the shelters undergoing training and rehabilitation. So, we really need increased funding to do the job,” she said.

She described human trafficking as evil, adding that it required increased and sustained effort by all stakeholders to eradicate the crime from the society.

“It is expected that inter-agency collaboration and renewed proactive intervention mechanisms would lead to, among other things, enlightening the vulnerable population, widening the scope of our campaigns to effectively suppress and eradicate the evil activities of human traffickers especially at the grassroots level,” she said.

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Nigerian Extradited to the US on Human Trafficking Charges

From the Gazette:

Germantown, Maryland, USA- A Nigerian man, formerly of Germantown, Maryland wanted since 2003 in connection to the human trafficking and abuse of a teenage girl was extradited from the West African country on Monday.

George Chidebe Udeozor, 51, formerly of the 14400 block of Seneca Road, and his ex-wife, Adaobi Stella Udeozor, were charged in 2003 in connection with the physical and sexual abuse of the Nigerian teen who worked for them in Germantown for little or no pay for more than five years, according to a statement from U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. George Udeozor appeared in the Greenbelt court Monday, and was held pending a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.

It could not be learned if he has an attorney. ‘‘He’s been fighting extradition for some time, and it’s a diplomatic process,” said Marcia Murphy, spokeswoman for the state U.S. Attorney’s office. ‘‘He did not want to come back.”

Udeozor had already fled the country when he was charged with involuntary servitude, conspiracy and harboring an alien for financial gain in 2003. The charges come with maximum penalties of 20 years imprisonment, a three-year term of unsupervised release and a $250,000 fine.

Adaobi Udeozor was found guilty in 2004 and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. She was ordered to pay $110,250 in restitution to the girl, who was physically and sexually assaulted and denied an education while living in the couple’s home. She appealed her case to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a judge affirmed her conviction and sentence on Feb. 1.

Their three-count indictment alleged the couple forced the girl to work and care for their six children from September 1996, when she was 14, to October 2001.

The girl, now in her mid-twenties, gave an victim impact statement during the sentencing, Murphy said at the time.

The indictment said the couple brought the girl to the U.S. on a passport that was not in her name and promised her family that she would be paid and attend school. She was physically and sexually abused.

The couple took advantage of the girls’ illegal status, threatening to send her back to Nigeria to discourage her from resisting their assaults, authorities said. And they occasionally represented her as a relative, to avoid detection.

Italian Police Smash Nigerian Drug Gangs

From VOA News:

Italy's anti-Mafia unit has smashed a Nigerian drug and human-trafficking ring that forced hundreds of women into prostitution. Police say dozens of Nigerians were arrested in Italy on Tuesday and 15 others in European countries including the Netherlands.

Operation Viola ended early Tuesday carried out by Italian and Dutch police with the help of Interpol. A total of 66 Nigerian citizens were arrested, mainly in Italy, accused of smuggling compatriots into Europe to work as prostitutes and drug dealers. Police said 51 suspects were arrested and are accused of being affiliated with the Italian mafia who have been linked to human trafficking, slavery, kidnapping and international drug trafficking.

Police also uncovered "serious adoption irregularities" in which Nigerian women living in Italy were able to take infants from Nigerian orphanages and sell them abroad.

One of the police chiefs involved in the operation said one of the most chilling and touching aspects from a human point of view was the way these women were forced into slavery, the way the were trafficked. These women, he said, were completely subjugated with voodoo rites.

Expressing satisfaction at the outcome of the operation, Interior Minister Giuliano Amato noted "a powerful international organization that exploited human beings and in particular minors has been smashed." "These are extremely serious crimes that have brought slavery back, feeding off poverty," he said.

Amato added that law enforcement needed to be inflexible with these criminals, and thanks to great police work, excellent results are being achieved.

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I find this article particularly interesting because of the use of unusual cultural factors, in this case voodoo, to control the trafficking victims. It's also good to see law enforcement agencies working together (Italian & Dutch police & Interpol). I will keep track of this and see what happens in court- now it's up to the criminal justice system to convict the offenders.

Operation Busts Trafficking Ring with Victims from Nigeria

Sorry for my hiatus. A bit of holiday traveling kept me from contributing as I should. Back to work! From the IHT:

Italian and Dutch authorities on Tuesday arrested dozens of Nigerians accused of smuggling their compatriots into Europe to work as prostitutes and drug traffickers, police said.

The police operation also uncovered that it called "serious adoption irregularities" in which Nigerian women living in Italy were apparently able to take infants from Nigerian orphanages and then sell them abroad, a police statement said.

Officials offered few details at a news conference, saying that they knew of only one case in which two children were taken from an orphanage and handed over to a prostitution "madam" in Italy. But officials said they believed it was a growing trade and that one aspect of the investigation would now focus on contacting Nigerian authorities to ensure that such illegal international adoptions end.

Overall, authorities carried out 66 arrest warrants early Tuesday, all but 15 of them in Italy...

The suspects in Italy are accused of mafia association, criminal association aimed at human trafficking, slavery, kidnapping, and international drug trafficking, police said.

Many of those arrested were prostitution madams, who pay thousands of euros for each new girl to be smuggled into the country, said Giovanni Conzo, an anti-mafia prosecutor in Naples where the Nigerian operation carried out much of its work.

Other young Nigerians were used as drug mules, paid about 3000 Euros per trip to swallow cocaine or heroin in condoms and transport it around Europe, he said.

As the article states, few details were released curtailing the variety of information available on the actual bust. The BBC mentioned that the gang's activities earned the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Human and drug trafficking are two of the most lucrative international crimes, along with arms trafficking. The operation has been an on-going investigation and prosecution process with around 150 people arrested in the last year. This probably should have been more obvious, but something I found nonetheless interesting, the investigation has found that drug smuggling has been able to go low-cost due to the availability of low-cost travel (particularly air fare) in Europe.

The only thing in the article I didn't find encouraging was the statement made by Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Arnato, which alluded to the arrests being proof of a new slave trade growing in Europe, taking advantage of poor Nigerians. Only in the sense that awareness and reaction, is the problem new. In fact, some of the hits I got while trying to get more information on the arrests led to articles from as early as 2001 detailing the horror of Nigerian children trafficked into Europe in large numbers.

Making Noise, Inc. is a non-profit media group that focuses using communication to raise awareness about social justice issues in Africa. They run a small blog on their site dedicated to Nigerian sex-trafficking to Italy. The promo was not ok, but the information in the blog posts is interesting.

Probably the most informative source I found was an article from Migration Information Source, a project of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC, is an informational webpage with articles and statistics from every region of the world on migration issues. Their July 2005 paper on "Trafficking in Women from Nigeria to Europe," while limited in the scope of victims, provides the reader with information on the process of trafficking from Nigeria to Europe from start to finish, including the settings of Nigeria and Italy (push and pull factors), how the women are trafficked, the usual route of traffickers to Italy from Africa, how the criminal organization sustains itself, etc. I was very impressed and if the arrest prompts you to take a further look into the problem specifically dealing with Africa and Italy, I highly suggest this site.